Kurort Oybin, Germany

Here are a few views of our late-January weekend getaway to the town of Oybin, located near the city of Zittau on the German-Czech-Polish border. Katrin and I went with our friends from Dresden. A pretty international crew, we were 3 Americans, 2 Australians, 1 Swede, 1 German, and 1 Czech.

We rented a house and a cabin just outside of town and used that as our base/hangover refuge for the weekend. On Saturday, we visited the ruins of the Oybin Cloister and Castle and were lucky to have great weather for our "ascent". The pictures here were taken at the castle.

It was built in the middle of the 14th century and unfortunately was heavily damaged by fire in the middle of the 16th century. At that time there were insufficient funds to rebuild it, so it was left as a ruin. Shortly after the fire, the castle was opened to curious visitors and therefore has been a tourist attraction for almost 500 years!

The castle has impressive views of the Zittau Mountains and the city of Zittau, but is also very interesting to wander through its remaining architecture. It is still impressive, even after 500 years of exposure.

The town of Oybin is small, but has a few nice restaurants and plenty of accomodations for weekend visitors. It's located only about a mile from the Czech border (by foot - there are no roads) and about 5 miles from the Polish border. It's a cozy, quiet town that few people (outside of Saxony) know about so it makes for a good getaway from the noise and stress of everyday life.

Nice way to spend a January weekend.